Beer Reading Comprehension Exercises

BEER
1. The Earliest Beer Recipe

Beer brewing dates to almost 6000 BC. However, it was the Sumerians around 2000 BC who really loved the
stuff. Their plaques and carvings often center on people or gods drinking from large jars of beer. A hymn to one of
their most important goddesses, Ninkasi, is actually a very detailed explanation of how to make beer; this was
helpful in a society that was almost entirely illiterate. Want to make some beer but can’t read the recipe? Just start
reciting the hymn and you’re set. Beer was so important that the average Sumerian couldn’t be bothered to stop
drinking it for anything apparently, that’s some dedication to your booze.
2. Beer is Dangerous
For your liver, obviously. But beer brewing is also a dangerous process due to the chances of bottles exploding,
as today’s home brewers know. Sometimes, however, you get beer destruction on an even larger scale. At a
London brewery in 1814, a vat containing more than 100,000 gallons of ale exploded, sending the beer rushing
down the street through poor residential areas. It destroyed two houses and one pub, killing nine people in the
process. However, one of those people only had himself to blame. When the beer settled into the gutters, people,
enticed by free booze (even if it did have bits of road in it), rushed to the streets to drink it. A gentleman indulged
a little too much and died from alcohol poisoning the next day.
3. People will do anything for Beer

Seriously, they will. During Prohibition in America people took to drinking hair tonic and posing as members of the
clergy to get alcohol. Sometimes people come together on a large scale in the never ending quest for free beer.
In Australia on Easter weekend in 2001, a beer truck blew a tire and overturned into a river. The driver was able
to escape but his cargo sank to the bottom of the river. Hearing about the accident, people gathered at the scene,
some in full scuba gear, and spent the entire weekend recovering the beer. One man managed to get 400 bottles.
Did they return it to the company? Of course not. Despite a warning from police that what they were doing was
theft, the divers took off with the whole lot.
4. Brewing is Woman’s Work

In ancient and medieval times the job of making beer fell to women. In some cultures it was considered such an
honor that only beautiful or noble women could do it. In medieval Europe brewing was one of a housewife’s
regular tasks, just like cooking and cleaning and baby making. Some of these women became famous for being
exceptional brewers and started supplying people other than their own families. You never knew what you were
getting though. One brewer let her chickens roost over her beer vats and when they defecated would simply stir
the refuse into the beer. Yummy.
5.Religious Beer
The few beer producers who weren’t women tended to be monks. Monasteries have a rich history of brewing beer
in order to refresh tired travelers and to sell to make money to run the monastery. Today some still have active
breweries, especially the Trappist Monks in Belgium and the Netherlands. Trappists make beer in order to remain
entirely self-sufficient, allowing them to run their monasteries on the money they make from the brewery and that
alone. So, strangely, while some religions look down upon or even forbid the consumption of alcohol, others have
making beer as a tenant of their doctrine. The most famous monk-made beer produced today is probably Chimay.
6. Beer is Medicine
Beer was often used as medicine in medieval times. But those people used just about anything as medicine
whether it worked or not, right? Modern people wouldn’t be so silly. Or would they? Shortly after the start of
Prohibition the government ruled that doctors could give out beer for medicinal purposes (sound familiar?). This
made members of the Temperance Movement furious; here they had finally won their long fight to outlaw alcohol
and people were still going to be able to get it because of a loophole in the 18th Amendment. Would doctors’
offices become the new dens of vice that bars had recently been? Debate broke out in Congress and the
American Medical Association about the importance of medicinal beer. In the end, the Temperance Movement
won out again, leading to the rise of speakeasies and organized crime.
7. The World’s Oldest Brewery

It’s a terrible stereotype that Germans are all huge beer drinkers. However, their country of 80 million did until just
a few years ago have more breweries than the 300 million strong USA. They also lay claim to the oldest brewery.
Located in Bavaria, Weihenstephan Abbey has been making beer since 1040. That’s almost 1000 years of
continuous beer production. While it hasn’t been a religious house in 200 years the brewery is still in operation.
8. Beer in Mythology
Virtually every polytheistic religion has a god or goddess of beer. The epic Finnish poem Kalevala spends more
time on beer than on the creation of man. The Egyptian lion-goddess Sekhmet gave up killing forever once she
got drunk enough. And the Greeks and Romans had Dionysus and Bacchus, respectively, the god of pleasure
and wine and freeing ones inner self from care and worry. Cults sprung up around him and his worshipers would
go outside of the cities at night for huge drunken orgies. All in the name of worshipping their god, of course.
9. Drinking Ages
The age at which you are allowed to buy alcohol varies surprisingly little from country to country, usually falling
between 16 and 21. However, parts of India have a drinking age of 25, the latest in the world. Many Muslim
countries outlaw alcohol consumption altogether while a very few countries allow anyone of any age to buy beer.
The age at which you are allowed to purchase alcohol is often different from when you can legally drink it. For
example, in the UK you must be 18 to purchase alcohol but it is legal for you to drink it in a private home under
adult supervision from the age of 5.
10. Beer and Spit

The Incas and some Pacific Island cultures used spit to ferment their beer. Beer or Chicha was very important for
Incan festivals. They had large breweries devoted to making enough of the stuff. The recipe went something like
this: take a large vat of water and let it warm up in the sun. Get a bunch of women to chew corn until it is a pulp in
their mouths. The women then spit the pulp into the vat of warm water and let it sit for a few weeks. Then simply
strain the lumpy, cloudy mixture and it’s ready to serve- wait, where are you going?
Questions
1. Why was the hymn to the goddess Ninkasi so important to the Sumerians?
2. Did ten thousand, one hundred thousand or one million gallons of ale explode in 1814?
3. What does come together on a large scale mean?
4. What job fell to woman in medieval Europe to do?
5. What’s a Trappist?
6. Because the Temperance Movement won out what did it lead to?
7. How long has the world’s oldest brewery been making beer?
8. If I want to free myself from care and worry what do the God’s suggest I do?
9. Can I drink alcohol at home in the U.K. with my Dad at 5 year’s old?
10. What do the Pacific Island cultures sometimes use to ferment their beer?

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BEER

1. The Earliest Beer Recipe

3. People will do anything for Beer

4. Brewing is Woman’s Work

7. The World’s Oldest Brewery

10. Beer and Spit

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